The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood

by Diana Gabaldon

  Third-century Byzantium? Not so much, and you may need to find someone knowledgeable in ancient Greek to assist you. On the one hand, having few research sources from your period means less work on the upside—but a lot more on the downside, as you’ll need to use a lot more imagination in creating immersive settings and interesting psychological studies of your characters.

  For obscure periods, therefore, your research might be somewhat more abstract and esoteric. You might read first-person accounts of displaced persons, for instance, in order to work your way into the mindset of St. Patrick, a young Roman who was kidnapped and enslaved by Irish raiders.36 You might stumble across (or find in the course of your painstaking researches) the Museum of London—which has an excellent section on Roman settlements and villas of Britain, with scale models of estates and towns.

  You might be working with Appalachian settlers in the eighteenth or nineteenth century and find the Foxfire books useful. These are an invaluable set (twelve books, I think) of traditional mountain techniques and folklore, compiled by a teacher named Eliot Wigginton and his students. The first volume includes “Hog Dressing, Log Cabin Building, Mountain Crafts and Foods, Planting by the Signs, Snake Lore…” and a number of other fascinating (and useful) topics.

  Or you might have a friend send you—out of the blue—the three-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica—published in 1771. Just in case you want to know what people believed and how they did things in general, I mean….

  Essentially, doing research is like winding a tangle of string up into a tidy ball: you find a loose end and pull. But as a general rule, if you’re working diligently in a particular direction—and it’s the direction you should be following—the universe usually comes out to meet you.

  A Brief Footnote on Tidiness

  In the interests of entertainment and communication, I do now and then post snapshots of my office (on Twitter, Facebook, and/or my website37 In particular, I put up photos of my bookshelves (see this page). People who like books are always curious as to what someone is reading—and people who read historical novels like to know what some of the sources are that go into said novels.

  I’m as fascinated by the audience’s responses to my bookshelves as the audience is by the books and other impedimenta. It seems to be about 20:1 in terms of “OMG, this looks just like my shelves!/I love it!” vs. “What a mess!/How can you FIND anything!/Let me come and organize that for you!”

  I appreciate both schools of thought—and my sincere thanks to the kind souls who think I would do better (in some undefined way) if my books were alphabetized, sorted by color, arranged by height, or generally tidied into a visually pleasing (to them) formation that has nothing to do with what’s actually in the books.

  Now, putting aside any of my private opinions regarding the psychology that causes people to value Tidiness Über Alles (I think y’all do it out of a sense of pervasive anxiety that makes you want to control your environment, but that’s just an opinion based on observations of close family members and friends)—tidiness qua tidiness has two possible aspects that recommend it as a virtue: aesthetics and/or function.

  As to aesthetics, I’ll just note that there are people who like Gustav Klimt and there are people who like Mondrian, and leave it at that. Aesthetics rests on the perception of pattern, and there are patterns in total chaos (this is the basis of chaos theory). Some people like simpler patterns, some like more complex ones, and that’s fine.

  Now function. That’s the “How can you FIND anything in there?” response, which assumes that, in fact, I can’t find anything unless the books are filed according to an arbitrary pattern that they personally find aesthetically appealing. Okay, this is conflating the two virtues of tidiness, which do not in fact operate in correlation with each other.

  For an alphabetized system to be useful, the user has to know that the book he or she wants is written by a specific author. This in turn means that the user has to have read every word in all of the books to hand (so as to know what’s in them) and be sufficiently familiar with them as to recognize almost any author’s content. If I had twenty books, I could do that, though there wouldn’t be much point to it.

  As it is…let me illustrate, briefly, how I work and how I use reference books. (This is, by the way, my core reference collection. The books I read for pleasure—mostly fiction—are mostly alphabetized by author, because in that case I’m usually looking for a specific author, and not for specific content.)

  As I work my way into the writing of a new book, I begin to pick up certain research books—from either the extant collection or new acquisitions—that I think might be useful as background or specific references to the novel I’m working on. I’ll put these on a shelf by themselves and add occasionally to this mini-core collection, as new thoughts occur to me or as I come across new relevant reference books. One book that’s been on the mini-core shelf for the last several Outlander novels is The World Almanac of the American Revolution. This lists and briefly describes a huge variety of the events—large and small—that occurred during the Revolution, organized by date.

  I use the Almanac not only to check dates but to choose historical events that a) have intrinsic interest or importance historically, b) have or can have fictional or dramatic significance to the people in my story, and c) are plausible to use in a geographical or chronological sense.

  Now, I left everyone in the eighteenth-century part of the story in Philadelphia at the end of An Echo in the Bone, in mid-June of 1778. Ergo, even though many interesting historical events occurred in 1778, a lot of them were much later in the year and/or weren’t anywhere near Philadelphia. (In some cases, I could begin a new book substantially later than where the last one stopped, but owing to the spectacular triple cliff-hanger at the end of Echo, I pretty much had to resolve those cliff-hangers in Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, and therefore MOBY (My Own Heart’s Blood = MOHB = MOH-B = MOBY. Geddit?) pretty much had to start where Echo ended.)

  So what happened in or near Philadelphia in the middle of June 1778? Three very interesting things: 1) Benedict Arnold became the military governor of Philadelphia for the Continental army on June 18, 2) the British troops withdrew from their occupation of Philadelphia on June 19, and 3) the Battle of Monmouth took place near Philadelphia on June 28.

  These events can all serve my purposes. So I need to know a few things as I work. I need to know who the commander-in-chief of the British forces in Philadelphia was, what his personality and background were, and (insofar as possible) what he looked like. I need to know where Benedict Arnold was in terms of his personal political arc at that time. And I need to know what the location, order of battle, chief historical personalities present, and outcome of the Battle of Monmouth were.

  Let’s start with the battle. If you look at the original photo of my bookshelves, just above and behind Otis’s38 right ear you’ll see a book on which the word BATTLES is clearly visible. I have no idea who wrote this book; it isn’t important. What is important is that it’s an encyclopedia of historical battles throughout the ages. What’s also important is that it’s standing with five other encyclopedias of battle. And it’s standing on that shelf because that’s where the general-purpose military books—encyclopedias of battle, treatises on weapons and artillery techniques, Osprey Men-at-Arms books dealing with the history and equipment of relevant regiments, a novel on the siege of Havana, two books on dueling, and The Military Experience in the Age of Reason (an excellent survey of the military structures and operations in effect across Europe in the eighteenth century)—are.

  Now, I have much-more-specific references that deal with the American Revolution, and there are a couple of detailed books that will give me maps and exhaustive descriptions of the Battle of Monmouth (those are in the smaller bookshelf, which you haven’t seen, and which contains most of the American Revolution–specific references)—but there’s no point reading through all that until/unless I decide that I really want to
use that battle. So I start with the general reference, which tells me—among other things—that General Washington commanded the American and allied troops at that battle. Cool. Jamie/Claire et al haven’t yet met George Washington, but this might be a good opportunity.

  So…if, say, Jamie is going to meet George Washington, what do I (as his amanuensis) need to know about GW? I need to know what he looks like, what his overall impression (as in personality) was, and how he talked. Where will I find that sort of information? In fact, I found what color his eyes were by Googling that question, but other specific information is on my mini-core shelf, in the form of Angel in the Whirlwind, an excellent biography of GW by an author whose name I don’t know and don’t need to know, because I know exactly where that book is.39

  And here’s where that little research foray ended up:

  Excerpt from Written in My Own Heart’s Blood

  Jamie ducked under the lintel after Dan and found himself in a dark, shabby room that smelled of cabbage water, grime, and the sharp reek of urine. There was one window, its shutters left open for air, and the sunlight coming in silhouetted the long-skulled head of a large man sitting at the table, who raised his head at the opening of the door.

  “Colonel Morgan,” he said, in a soft voice touched with the drawl of Virginia. “Have you brought me good news?”

  “That’s just what I brought you, General,” auld Dan said, and shoved Jamie ahead of him toward the table. “I found this rascal on the road and bade him come along. This’ll be Colonel Fraser, who I’ve told you of before. Just come back from Scotland, and the very man to take command of Taylor’s troops.”

  The big man had risen from the table and put out a hand, smiling—though he smiled with his lips pressed tight together, as though afraid something might escape. The man was as tall as Jamie himself, and he found himself looking straight into sharp gray-blue eyes that took his measure in the instant it took to shake hands.

  “George Washington,” the man said. “Your servant, sir.”

  “James Fraser,” Jamie said, feeling mildly stunned. “Your…most obedient. Sir.”

  “Sit with me, Colonel Fraser.” The big Virginian gestured toward one of the rough benches at the table. “My horse pulled up lame, and my slave’s gone to find another. No notion how long it may take him, as I require a good sturdy beast to bear my weight, and those are thin on the ground these days.” He looked Jamie up and down with frank appraisal; they were much of a size. “I don’t suppose you have a decent horse with you, sir?”

  Okay. Going back to the original set of questions, plainly I need to know the particulars of Benedict Arnold’s actions, context, and state of mind when he took over as military governor of Philadelphia. Fine. In the mini-core collection is George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots, a very detailed and excellent biography whose author I could check by looking at the spine, but I don’t care who wrote it, only that I can find it when I need it.40

  Excerpt from MOBY

  I thought I could manage the three blocks to the livery stable without incident, but at the corner of Walnut41 I was hailed by a familiar voice from a carriage window.

  “Mrs. Fraser? I say, Mrs. Fraser!”

  I looked up, startled, to see the hawk-nosed face of Benedict Arnold smiling down at me. His normally fleshy features were gaunt and lined, and his usually ruddy complexion had faded to an indoor pallor, but there was no mistaking him.

  “Oh!” I said, and made a quick bob. “How nice to see you, General!”

  My heart had sped up. I’d heard from Denny Hunter that Arnold had been appointed military governor of Philadelphia but hadn’t expected to see him so soon—if at all.

  I should have left it there but couldn’t help asking, “How’s the leg?” I knew he’d been badly injured at Saratoga—shot in the same leg that had been wounded a short time before, and then crushed by his horse falling with him in the storming of Breymann Redoubt—but I hadn’t seen him then. The regular army surgeons had attended him, and from what I knew of their work, I was rather surprised that he was not only alive but still had two legs.

  His face clouded a bit at that, but he continued to smile.

  “Still present, Mrs. Fraser. If two inches shorter than the other. Where are you going this morning?” He glanced automatically behind me, registering my lack of a maid or companion, but didn’t seem disturbed by it. He’d met me on the battlefield and knew me—and appreciated me—for what I was.

  I knew what he was, too—and what he would become.

  The hell of it was that I liked the man.

  And, not by serendipity but by the fact that historical events form a logical nexus when people are writing about them ex post facto, the Almanac, Angel in the Whirlwind, and George Washington and Benedict Arnold all mention that General Clinton had taken command of the British troops in Philadelphia at the time of the withdrawal, and our friend Wikipedia supplies me with a painting of the general and his birth date (so I know how old he is in 1778).

  Portrait painted by Andrea Soldi, presumably sometime between 1762–65. The general was born in 1730 so would be in his mid-thirties in this portrait, in his mid-forties when Claire meets him.

  Now, if Claire—it has to be Claire, for logistical reasons—is going to talk to General Clinton, I need to know a few other things, like what she’d be wearing and how she would travel. The bottom shelf of the second bay of my shelves has the large pictorial books on historical costume, while Aileen Ribeiro’s Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe is among the books on social/cultural English/European background—these being just to the right of the encyclopedias of battle.

  Vide: Excerpt from MOBY

  By the time we’d got my hair done up in something resembling order, corralled in a snood and pinned respectably under a broad-brimmed woven straw hat, I’d come up with at least a rough notion of what to tell General Clinton. Stick to the truth as far as possible. That was the first principle of successful lying, though it had been some time since I’d been last obliged to employ it.

  Well, then. A messenger had come for Lord John—one had—bringing a note—he did. I had no idea what was in the note—totally true. Lord John had then left with the messenger but without telling me where they were going. Also technically true, the only variance being that it had been a different messenger. No, I hadn’t seen in which direction they had gone; no, I didn’t know whether they had walked or ridden—Lord John’s saddle horse was kept at Davison’s livery on Fifth Street, two blocks away.

  That sounded good. If General Clinton chose to make inquiries, I was reasonably sure he’d discover the horse still in its stall and thus conclude that John was somewhere in the city. He would also presumably lose interest in me as a source of information and send soldiers round to whatever haunts a man such as Lord John Grey might be supposed to be visiting.

  And with any luck at all, by the time the general had exhausted such possibilities as Philadelphia offered, John would be back and could answer his own damned questions.

  Beginning to see how this works? For me, that is. I imagine some of the tidier-minded writers of historical fiction actually spend years poring through their references, tidily transferring bits of information to index cards (or their electronic equivalent) so that they can instantly look up women’s clothing, Revolutionary War battles, George Washington, physical appearance, and the like.

  If that suits the way they work, great. Anything that helps you get words on the page is the right thing to do. This is just how I do it.

  Basic Housekeeping

  By “housekeeping,” I mean the drudgery that ensures you don’t lose your work and you stand a reasonable chance of being able to find it when you need it.

  BACK THINGS UP

  I’m continually appalled by people who don’t back things up, but there are a horrifying number of them. Personally, I hate losing even a paragraph of my work and go to some trouble to prevent it. My procedures may seem excessive—and pe
rhaps they are, depending on circumstances. But for heaven’s sake, do at least do the first two steps on this list.

  Step 1: Turn on the automatic backup feature on your word processor. (Use the Help feature, if you don’t know where it is.)

  This feature normally allows you to choose how often to back things up automatically; what interval you choose may depend on your system and whether the automatic backup causes a noticeable slowdown in other functions. (Personally, I use a huge Alienware laptop with The Max in memory and RAM. I could probably back up the Bible every thirty seconds and not notice a thing, but your mileage may vary…. )

  Step 2: Copy your work periodically to a “cloud” service and/or an outside device. I use Dropbox myself, but there are many offsite services that allow you to store stuff in the cloud. Being paranoid, I also usually save my work to a thumb drive (what if Chinese hackers figure out how to appropriate the entire cloud?)—and I save it every time I leave my computer, even to go to the bathroom (an important consideration if you have pets, small children, or husbands who want to check their email and don’t realize that this can be done without closing everything else on the laptop…). I also save very large files—the interim pieces I call “chunks,” as well as complete sections of a book—by emailing them to myself. Gmail isn’t a foolproof archive, but it is quickly searchable.

  Step 3: It’s partly a function of how I work and partly the ability of a writer to envision far-fetched disasters, but I print off my work. (What about solar flares? What about hostile forces blasting every electronic circuit in the United States with an EMP?42 ) Not every day, but when I’ve completed a scene, I’ll print it off for my husband to read. (He’s the only person who gets to see what I’m working on while I’m working on it. Anything I post online is pretty much as good as I can make it and certified fit for human consumption.) He normally returns these pieces with marginal comments (like Nipples, again? or No guy would do that…but sometimes WOW!, which is Very Gratifying), and after reading these, I file the annotated scenes (well, I throw them into a banker’s box, but leave us not be picky here…).